Gambia VP touts tourism, downplays human rights issues

The Gambia
has an image problem: Dubbed the "Smiling
Coast of Africa,"
it is a tourist destination, but its
government has one of the region's worst records of human rights abuses. On
Tuesday, at an African tourism promotion event in New
York City, Gambian Vice-President Isatou Njie-Saidy
headed a delegation working toward improving the negative perceptions of the
country.

In a discussion with Njie-Saidy after the event, I mentioned to her that an Internet search of the Gambia yields many results about its human right abuses. In response, she shifted the topic to the United States: "Do they tell you about Guantánamo Bay? Seems like a human rights issue," she said. "And, you know, in the Internet, you have a lot of garbage. ... Don't believe everything you read: You have to look in between." She later accused social media of peddling untruths: "Social media is the problem," she said.

Accordingly, I brought up to the vice-president the
well-documented case of a journalist whose detention in government custody for
more than five years has left his family, friends, and colleagues in anguish. The
case of Ebrimah "Chief" Manneh, a reporter whose whereabouts, legal status, and
health have been unknown since Gambian state security agents arrested him in 2006 at his office at the pro-governmentDaily Observer,
was not unfamiliar to the vice-president. In fact, six
U.S. senators, UNESCO, and a West African human rights court have called on the Gambia to end its illegal detention
of the journalist.

Despite this, the vice-president told me, "The government
didn't arrest him. At the same time, people make up stories. Who knows what
happened to Manneh? We don't know--I cannot answer, because I don't know." She
then suggested that the journalist may have gone missing while attempting to
immigrate to Europe. "There are people who die
in the desert--anything can happen to anybody," she said.

Njie-Saidy's government has deprived
Manneh of his freedom and, more recently, referred
to the journalist's death. Still, the vice-president denied any responsibility
in accounting for his fate. "That incident, as far I know--I don't know anything
about it," she told me.

CPJ's Dario Reais contributed to this story.

Mohamed Keita is advocacy coordinator for CPJ's Africa Program. Keita has written about independent journalism and development in sub-Saharan Africa for publications including The New York Times and Africa Review, and has appeared on NPR, the BBC, Al-Jazeera, and Radio France Internationale. Keita has also given presentations on press freedom at the World Bank, U.S. State Department, and universities. Follow him on Twitter: @africamedia_CPJ.